Friday, August 30, 2024

FFB Review: Connections in Death: In Death Series by J.D. Robb


It is March 2061 as Connections in Death by J.D. Robb begins and Eve Dallas is out with her husband, Roarke, at a party. Just about the worst thing for her, but you do what you have to do when you are married to the richest man on the planet. She’s come a long way from where she started and she knows it.

 

Besides, the party obligation tonight is a party at Nadine Furst’s new place. Nadine is a good friend and Dallas also knows many of the guests. Both facts make it all a bit more tolerable. But, she does not know everybody in attendance.

While at the penthouse, she meets Rochelle Pickering, a child psychologist, and a good one. Roarke is going to hire her for one of his projects. Specifically, a soon to open shelter that Roarke is putting together to honor some young victims in a previous case while also trying to make sure, at least in a few cases, that the kids that come through avoid some of the horrors Dallas dealt with as she moved through the foster system. Roarke has made sure to include Dallas in every step of the project and Dallas approves.

 

Rochelle is thrilled to be hired and goes out with her boyfriend, to celebrate. She comes home after a great evening out to find her brother, Lyle Pickering, dead in the apartment they shared. Her date got her out of the apartment and called Dallas.

 

Dallas is the one and only Lieutenant Eve Dallas of the NYPSD and a very good homicide detective. Lyle was getting his life together. He did his prison time, got clean, learned a trade in prison, cut his gang ties, and was getting somewhere.  Now he is dead as somebody ended his future just as things were getting better.

 

And it is very clear to Dallas from the start that this was a homicide. There is no doubt that this was staged to appear as a fatal drug overdose, but the killer or killers really were sloppy in staging. A fact soon confirmed in autopsy.

 

Lyle Pickering was flat out murdered. So, who did it? Was it person or persons unknown from his old gang days? A prison cellmate from back in the day now out and settling a score? Somebody in the here and now?

 

Dallas, Roarke, and the team are soon on the hunt. This also won’t be the only murder tied to the case.

 

Part police procedural, part romance, and all around good, Connections in Death works and entertains the reader. Billed as the 48th book in the series, one does not expect any new character development here. Yet, a little bit comes through as Dallas continues to evolve and appreciate where she is now as compared to where she started from back in Dallas as a young child brutalized by her father. It has been one heck of a journey.

 


Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4aeE8bj

 

My large print reading copy came from the library we visit, the Lochwood Branch, here in NE Dallas.


Kevin R. Tipple ©2024

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